Sara M Saleh is a writer, poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants. Sara’s first novel is Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm Press, 2023) and her first poetry collection is The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat
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Book Club - Sara M Saleh’s The Flirtation of Girls; Gahzal El-Banat

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The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Ernest Price is a transgender man working as a secondary English teacher in Naarm/Melbourne. His writing has been published by Queerstories and Overland.
The Pyramid of Needs is his first novel.
Linda is about to hit the big time. The fact that there aren’t a lot of seventy year olds going viral just means it will be even more sensational when she does, and viral clicks can't help but lead to more sales of her Supreme Self Supplements.
Jack is living his best life as a teacher in Naarm/Melbourne. Or at least he’s trying to when his older sister Alice gives him a call. Their mother has taken a fall while live streaming at their home in Noosa.
Jack hasn’t spoken to Linda since he came out as a trans man more than ten years ago. Alice can talk to him about regret, but why does he have to put himself at risk for the family who rejected him?


Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople
Want more great conversations with Australian authors?
Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!
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Ernest Price’s The Pyramid of Needs

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Yumna Kassab is the author of  novels including Australiana and The Lovers. Her writing has been listed for prizes including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and The Stella Prize. 
Yumna Kassab is also Parramatta’s first laureate in literature
In Politica the reader is transported to conflict engulfing a country. Through glimpses of ordinary life and revolutionary struggle we are shown the cost of war on a people and the tenacity, the fierceness of will required to carry on.
Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople
Want more great conversations with Australian authors?
Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

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Yumna Kassab’s Politica

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She has published both fiction and nonfiction; Thunderhead is her fifth book.
Across a single day we are thrown into the life of Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes, stealing a few precious moments before her time is not her own, to the dinner party that looms over her calendar, the reader follows Winona as she tries simply to be herself…
Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople
Want more great conversations with Australian authors?
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Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead

Miranda is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. Her latest novel is Thunderhead.
Across a single day we are thrown into the life of Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes, stealing a few precious moments before her time is not her own, to the dinner party that looms over her calendar, the reader follows Winona as she tries simply to be herself…
Stepping out into the streets of Sydney, Winona has her lists and her responsibilities, all punctuated by the incessant buzzing of texts and reminders from her husband lest she stray from the day’s purpose. 
Winona wonders, perhaps suspects that she is looking at the world differently to everyone else. That might explain how they seem to navigate it so effortlessly while she only manages to muddle through.
The Thunderhead of the title looms large over the narrative, threatening to burst, drenching the fragile balance of Winona’s life.
Winona Dalloway is a wonderfully original character for the sharpness of her insights and the myriad of voices she offers on the minutiae of her day to day.
Throughout the novel the reader is confronted, as is Winona, by the specter of mental health. Within the novel it is both the reality of Winona’s experience of the world and a cudgel used to beat her into some semblance of the everyday. As we travel alongside Winona it becomes apparent that the way she looks at the world is not the problem so much as the voices that tell her she needs to be other or more than they perceive her to be.
Within the world of Thunderhead Winona is in fact a guiding light and even as we shift back and forth between her contradictory views of the world, we are certain that her fresh take on the everyday must be more wonderful than simply blindly living it.
There is a lyricism to Darling’s rendering of the inner world of Winona. Images float in and out of view as she encounters her world both as its surface and its potential.
We are introduced to the Transcendence Project; Winona’s search, perhaps striving to make an authentic connection with another person. Something that could lift them both out of the humdrum and confirm that there is a point to this existence.
As the day passes and Winona moves toward the inevitable, we learn that she is not simply one person struggling with the pressures of her world. Winona is subject to something more sinister, something threatening to strip her of her very essence.
But… I’ve said too much.
Thunderhead is a tremendous evocation of life lived on the edge of a threatened if perhaps not enacted violence. A study in control and escape that offers the reader a glimpse into a world of expectation imposed and shattered.

Book Club - Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Sharlene Allsop is the debut author of The Great Undoing which through its journey to publication was shortlisted for a 2019 Overland writing residency, and Highly Commended for the 2020 Boundless Indigenous Writers’ Mentorship.
Scarlet Friday is a truth teller in a hyper connected world. Even as everyone hurtles towards the future Scarlet delves into the past to understand our place, her place.
While Scarlet weaves the threads of her past, discovering her Great-Grandfather’s military service and the hostile reception he received as an Aboriginal man returning to a country that wouldn’t recognise his humanity, the rest of the world is teetering on the brink.
As systems shut down around the world, Scarlet finds herself on the run. Far from home she is a refugee seeking safe passage back to Australia.
Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople
Want more great conversations with Australian authors?
Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!
Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 
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Book Club - Sara M Saleh’s The Flirtation of Girls; Gahzal El-Banat

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